Affiliate software: RAP vs. Post Affiliate Pro

untimer, can you please contact me personally concerning Post Affiliate Pro question? 505-639-5939, Mark

I beg to differ....

Directly from the Paypal Acceptable Use Policy

The last time I checked, MLM stands for multi-level marketing, and my personal experience backs up the fact that Paypal will, indeed, freeze your account if they find you promoting ANY MLM using their payment processing service.

RAP allows affiliates to be paid directly by customers. You do not touch their funds. Therefore, there is no "waste" to the affiliates. The PayPal fee is only paid once.

But it goes further than that...

If you live or have a business in America, starting today, 1/1/11, our dear "get the Government out of our lives" Republicans in Congress have refused (three times now) to repeal a crazy tax revenue measure THEY snuck into the HCRA that requires EVERYBODY to collect SSNs/TINs from everybody they pay commissions to AND file 1099's for them at the end of the year -- not just those who were paid $600 or more, but ANY commissions!

So dear friends, if you're collecting 100% of your sales receipts from customers and then paying them out to affiliates later on, you'd better get your affiliates to send you W9 forms before you send them any more payments. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for a very costly audit.

If you think THAT is not wasting your time, money, and effort, over just having customers pay affiliates directly then by all means, have at it.

There's not more demand for it, IMO, because there is a widespread myth that refund requests are unmanageable using this model. This is a MYTH because it flies in the face of the experience hundreds of people who've been using this model since RAP was introduced 3+ years ago. In fact, RAP vendors tend to have FEWER refund requests overall than average Clickbank merchants, for example. RAP vendors I've asked typically see 2%-5% refund rates, whereas Clickbank is 8%-12%. With RAP, the customer needs to contact the seller directly. That in itself tends to discourage people from requesting refunds.

BTW, the best way to reduce refund requests is do dial back the HYPE and OVER-ZEALOUS CLAIMS that are made on your sales page!

This statement is complete nonsense.

PayPal charges about 3% commissions on all transactions. If you get paid by a customer, you're charged 3%. If you then pay your affiliates, THEY are charged 3% again, unless possibly if you use PayPal's Bulk Pay facility. (I've never used it, but I hear it may not charge fees.)

Three percent is three percent. I doesn't matter if the payment is ten cents or $10,000. PayPal will take about 3% as their vig.

-David

Danny,

Maybe I wasn't clear. That was a quote pasted directly from the Paypal Acceptable Use Policy. It's available from the links at the bottom of the page when you are logged into your Paypal account.

Affiliates DO like instant commissions!

...and an affiliate pays fees anytime he/she is paid via Paypal, whether that payment occurs at the time of sale, or if it is delayed to arrive according to a merchant's payment schedule.

Obviously, the real reason it isn't available in Post Affiliate Pro, is that they just haven't developed the ability to do it.

Hi,

I know that there are very few that offer instant commissions

That doesn't mean that there is little demand - just less competition for those that DO offer it.

The way that instant commissions have been implemented with Rapid Action Profits and with most of the other popular affiliate management systems that offer this, the sales are rotated, so that the affiliate gets paid the full sale price on his/her second sale, regardless of the commission rate that has been set.

For instance, if the selling price is $197, and the commission rate is 25% - the merchant gets the first sale, the affiliate gets the full $197 on his/her second sale, and then the merchant will get the 3rd and 4th sales. At that point, it's the affiliate's turn again.

With the same example, but with a commission rate of 50%, the merchant still gets the first sale, and the affiliate gets the full $197 on his/her second sale. At that point, the affiliate has received their 50%, so the rotation begins again - merchant -> affiliate, merchant -> affiliate, etc.


I have discussed this with Paypal. Just advertising 2nd tier commissions is enough to get an account frozen, IF it is advertised on the same page as the Paypal button/link is displayed (i.e. the sales page). Of course, if Paypal doesn't know about it, they can't take action, but if their link is used on a page that advertises multi (2 or more) levels of compensation, and they confirm that (i.e. an unhappy customer or a competitor reports the page to Paypal), they WILL freeze the account that the payment link goes to.